


love in the time of appetizers

by screamlet



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Banter, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Getting Together, Holidays, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet





	love in the time of appetizers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audrey1nd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audrey1nd/gifts).



“I just had the perfect idea for our wedding—no, no, come out of your blanket burrito. DANNY I AM TALKING TO YOU.”

Danny turns in the sheets so he’s facing Mindy. His eyebrows are angry even in the moonlight, beautiful like a doodle she did on the notepad next to her phone while on hold for 45 minutes with Zara’s customer service line—beautiful the way it all worked together way better than it should have. 

“What?” Danny asks. “You wanna wake up that racist old lady in the building?”

“What racist old lady?”

“You know, the one. The one who talked to me in the mail room.”

“Was I there? I don’t remember this.”

“Look, if there’s one racist old lady who talks to strange men in the mail room, then she probably talks to _anyone_ in the mail room—”

“I’m pretty sure you’re making her up.”

“Yeah, Mindy. That’s what I’m doing at 2 AM, I wanna talk about the _imaginary_ racist old ladies in your apartment building, not the real ones.”

“Wait, now there’s more than one? See, if you _talked_ to your neighbors and got to _know them_ you would know that a good neighbor relationship starts with asking their name, which of the Marx Brothers they flirted with during the Depression—”

“2 AM. What did you want?”

“TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE PERFECT WAY TO SHARE OUR LOVE WITH OUR FRIENDS, DANNY, _GOD_.”

Danny says nothing, so Mindy begins with: 

“So you know how I love romantic comedies.”

“No, please, tell me again,” Danny says.

“I can show you with—”

“Nope, I’m up, I’m awake.” Danny sits up against the headboard and turns on the lamp at his side. “I’m awake and I love you and I am listening to every single word you have to say right now at this moment about our wedding that’s like seven months away.”

Mindy sits up, too, and says excitedly, “Ooh, this is so Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, you know? That whole _oh Laura, I woke up in the middle of the night and I gotta look across at you to the separate bed where you’re sleeping and tell you all about this crazy dream I had! And the dream was that we were trapped in another TV show!_ thing.”

“That was Bob Newhart, not Dick Van Dyke,” Danny says.

“Okay,” Mindy sighs. “I’m going to ignore the implication that you think I don’t know the difference between my Nick at Nite shows and point, instead, to our bar trivia trophy where the final round was _Retro TV_ and we swept the _hell_ out of that round.”

“We really did, though.” Danny takes Mindy’s hand and almost enjoys the brain-swirling sleep delirium for a moment. “What about the wedding?”

“I wanna do a _When Harry Met Sally_ thing at the wedding,” she says. “Like you know how photobooths and polaroids were totally the big thing at weddings for a while? I think we should set up a video booth where couples can come in, sit down, and tell their stories Harry and Sally style, and then we can post a supercut of the stories.”

Mindy gives him a moment before she squeezes his hand and pokes him in the chest. “Hey. What do you think? Does it sound—I don’t know, what’s the Danny Castellano word for everything I do that you totally hate? Is this one of those things?”

“No, I love it,” Danny says. “That’s a really good idea. I think our cheesy, terrible friends are gonna love it, and I think you’ve already written your half of how we got together.”

Mindy beams and kisses him. “Yes, exactly. Okay, let’s go to sleep. Don’t forget this.”

“What? _You_ remember.”

“Of course I’ll remember it, Danny, but you need to also remember so when the wedding people roll into the reception hall with a beautiful antique couch we’ve rented for the day you don’t totally freak out or try to have sex with me on it until the party’s over.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Danny replies. “To that promise and to the literal couch seven months from now.”

“I’ll tell your brother to add it to our pinterest page.”

“Wait, why are you pinteresting with my brother?”

Mindy leans across the bed and flicks off the light. “Don’t even, I’ve seen you liking things on pinterest from facebook, I know that you know what they both are.”

“That’s not—I asked—” Danny sighs and curls back up into the sheets. “Of course I know what _pinterest_ is. Pinterest is a _thing_.”

“If you’re going to mutter murderous thoughts in your sleep, could you do it in my ear?” Mindy asked. “It’s sexier that way and I’ll be lulled into a much deeper false sense of security.”

Danny, though, was thinking about how their Harry and Sally story would go, and it would probably be something like:

*

Jeremy’s St. Crispin’s Day party was a success. 

That didn’t mean Jeremy had any idea why he was throwing a St. Crispin’s Day party.

“She’s a witch,” Jeremy whispered into his phone. “One minute she’s telling me that she’s just seen a new movie with Gilderoy Lockhart _from 1989_. Now I have 20 of the most terrible people in New York City drinking my gin and eating my Trader Joe’s appetizers. _Gavin, I was saving those for a sad day_.” 

Danny scooped up a handful of tiny chicken pot pies and headed into Jeremy’s bedroom where he could probably catch the rest of the game or anything playing on cable, literally anything if it got him away from Morgan recapping _Homeland_ while the tiny Deslaurier scored it on a thing Danny didn’t even have a fucking name for.

“Are they still out there with the theremin?” Mindy asked.

Danny let out a yell and dropped a tiny chicken pot pie on Jeremy’s bedspread. “Jesus Christ how are you in _every_ room!” 

“This is like the eighth time you’ve caught me leaving someone’s party to snoop in the host’s room,” Mindy replied. “This can’t be a surprise anymore.”

“You’re right, that’s on me,” Danny said. He plucked the pot pie from the bed and popped it into his mouth. “Who’re you hiding from this time?”

“Oh, my date,” she replied.

“You brought a date? Is this a party-date occasion? Who the hell is St. Crispin anyway?”

“I don’t know, but Kenneth Branagh was way into him,” she said. “And I’d never seen Jeremy’s apartment and he’s British, so. St. Crispin’s Day! Jeremy was way into it, too.”

“Oh, good, ‘cause I ate like a whole box of those little pot pies.” 

He sat down at the top of Jeremy’s bed and helped himself to the TV remote. Mindy took that as an excuse to join him and take one of the pot pies. “What should we watch? Is it too early for _Fashion Police_?”

“Let’s watch _Chopped_ , that’s always on.”

Three episodes of _Chopped_ later, Jeremy came into his bedroom and shrieked, “NO. WHY.” 

"Jeremy this isn't what it looks like!" Mindy yelled. 

She considered it for a moment, though, because Jeremy was probably commenting on how she was topless with her skirt unzipped and rucked up around her waist, straddling Danny in Jeremy's bed.

"Okay, this might be exactly what it looks like," Mindy admitted. "But I did always want to say that, you know, that line because—"

"JEREMY," Danny yelled, his face buried in Mindy's cleavage because he was embarrassed and also for cleavage-enjoying purposes. "Could you give us a minute or ten."

Jeremy slammed the door, then opened it again. "I will be yelling when you emerge, but please know if this takes ten minutes I will be very quietly impressed. I will never admit it, but I will be very impressed."

Outside the closed bedroom door, they could hear Peter cackling as he pressed himself against the door. “Guys, pay no attention to my heavy breathing, okay, just pretend it’s you, in the echo chamber of your feelings and boning.”

“Let’s take this to the bathroom,” Danny said.

“And then out the window,” Mindy said. “And then when we land gracefully, we start new lives as poet-smugglers in the Pacific.”

“Yeah, okay.”

*

At the office a week after Jeremy’s party and the inevitable shift in their relationship with the Food Network and _Chopped_ , Danny and Mindy were filling out patient charts in the office kitchen when Danny invited himself over to Mindy’s.

Sort of.

“It’s Diwali, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes it is, Daniel, thank you for remembering to call it Diwali and not _Indian Christmas_.”

“That was just once,” Danny grumbled. “You doing anything?”

“Kind of,” Mindy said. “Some friends of mine from college are having a party at their big house in Millburn, New Jersey, where they moved when they got even lamer than they were at Princeton.”

“Oh,” Danny said.

“Why?”

“....you wanna do something afterwards?” Mindy raised her eyebrows at Danny, who shrugged and stammered for a moment. “I don’t know, like, I'll come over with something I’m trying out for this year’s gingerbread house.”

“Oh my god,” Mindy said. “Like a gingerbread cabin? A gingerbread hut? A gingerbread pool house with tiny gingerbread Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant in front of it re-enacting _The Philadelphia Story_?”

“Let’s go with gingerbread cabin,” Danny said.

Mindy said, “Come with me to Diwali.”

“I can’t, I’ve got to—”

“I already rented a car,” Mindy said. “We drive to Millburn, go to the party, stay until seven or something, drive back, go to your place for baking and stuff.”

“Baking and stuff,” Danny repeated.

“Your apartment ready for baking _and stuff_?” Mindy laughed.

Morgan walked into the kitchen, shook his head, shrieked for a long moment, then slowly backed out again with his hands over his ears.

Mindy and Danny watched this, then looked at each other. “We should probably look into that,” Mindy said.

“Or,” Danny said, “You tell me whether this outfit's okay for Diwali.”

She declared it needed more orange and yellow, which they argued about while ignoring Morgan as he rounded up volunteers for a cleansing exorcism of the kitchen.

*

Thanksgiving rolled around a few weeks later. Mindy and Danny measured these weeks in three random cocktail nights at the bar closest to their practice, eight hospital cafeteria dinners, 19 doctors’ lounge vending machine snacks, and six real sit-down dinners that weren’t _dates_. They were just nights where they changed into their best clothes after work, agreed on a place to have a meal together, and ended up at one of their apartments for sex afterwards. 

“I think we should have a dinner for all the weirdos we know,” Mindy said. “Gwen’s last year was a disaster and I like being in the city for a major holiday so we can go dancing and get completely wasted if something goes wrong.”

Danny was wearing his red frosting glasses so he could read Instagram off Mindy’s iPad. Their eyes met as his eyebrows peeked up over the glasses’ red frame and the top of the iPad. They were both thinking: _don’t say WHAT COULD GO WRONG, because then something will go wrong_. Then, of course, they wondered if _that_ counted as saying something, and hoped that it didn’t.

“My place is big enough,” he said.

*

“WHAT.”

“What?”

“That—that’s how you think we got together.”

“Mindy that’s _how it happened_ …”

“What, that I’m marrying the third guy to eat bite-sized chicken pot pies in bed with me while watching the Food Network? Danny. DANNY.”

“MINDY THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED.”

“YOU SWOON MORE WHEN YOU TELL THAT STORY. YOU DIE OF LOVE LIKE, EVERY FIVE MINUTES BECAUSE WE CAN’T ADMIT OUR REAL FEELINGS.”

“I THOUGHT THAT WAS IMPLIED.”

“YOU IMPLY THAT WITH CRYING.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Danny said. “Whatever, my version is really touching and a fun take on our national obsession with holidays and cheer and stuff.” Danny looked at her and said, “Do you really not remember the rest of that conversation?”

Mindy said, “ _No_ ,” but after a moment she bit her lip and said, “Oh. Yeah I do.”

*

“My place is big enough,” he said.

“You’d invite everyone from the office over for Thanksgiving? At your place?” Mindy asked.

“They’ve already seen it,” Danny said with a wave of his hand. “The mystique is gone.”

“Great, then—”

“Also,” Danny said. “ _We_?”

There was a split second of silence as Mindy looked at him like she had been caught in a literal set of headlights.

“Like the partners,” Mindy said. “For our employees.”

“Like you and me?” Danny asked.

Neither of them spoke, so Danny took slow steps towards her.

“I feel like music should be playing,” Mindy said. “Like. You know that piano song. It’s in tons of movies. Umm. It’s not Billy Joel, I don’t think. Oh. [_Have a little faith in me_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aYxMuLb3h8). Like. That’s a… do you have that on iTunes or something?”

“Windows Media Player,” Danny said. 

Mindy let him wrap his arms around her as she rested her hands on his shoulders. “I hate that when you say something like that, I just—it’s so _you_ and I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it at all.”

“Don’t hate me anymore,” Danny said. “Don’t wait for holidays to come over.”

“You know every awful thing you’ve ever said about the guys I’ve gone out with is going to reflect on you, like, forever, because I’m going to call you Dr. Danny Lahiri until the end of time.”

“We could do worse than that,” Danny replied.

Neither of them said anything for a moment, but Mindy finally cracked up. Danny pulled her closer as she said, “I think it’s a good sign that neither of us said _we HAVE done worse_.”

“I mean, we have,” Danny said. “But here we are. Let’s do this.”

“Yeah,” Mindy said. “Let’s do this.”


End file.
